


Yet We Will Make Him Run

by orphan_account



Series: Agents and Ministers of Grace [7]
Category: Agent Carter (TV)
Genre: F/F, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-19
Updated: 2015-02-19
Packaged: 2018-03-13 17:53:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,597
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3390749
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The companion to Episode 7, SNAFU.  Angie, wrestling with heartbreak and doubt, finds Peggy's note.  Peggy and Jarvis, while chained to a table, find some time to talk about Peggy's relationship with Angie.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Yet We Will Make Him Run

_“Had we but world enough and time,_  
 _This coyness, lady, were no crime._  
 _We would sit down, and think which way_  
 _To walk, and pass our long love’s day.”_

 

Angie couldn’t help thinking of that poem that Peggy had quoted the night she’d declined to come back to her room.  She supposed now that it was federal agents English was hearing, not time’s winged chariot.  She couldn’t help wondering if Peg had known she was running out of time on whatever it was she was up to. 

In any case, the whole thing had left Angie completely wrecked.  She had made love to the most beautiful, brilliant girl in all of New York.  The kind of girl she’d dream about but never imagined she’d actually get.  

Then… She had watched her get picked up by government agents.  Angie had had her heart broken a good six or seven times by now, all by pretty girls with boyfriends who said a lot of sweet things that meant nothing in the end.  In the end, they all did what they were supposed to and married some dimwit and cooked and cleaned for him.  In the back of her mind, Angie had always expected it would end that way with Peggy, too.

But this was worse.  

She’d come storming back into Angie’s room for a breathless goodbye kiss just when she should have been running.  If she hadn’t come back to kiss her, she’d probably have gotten away.

But the more she thought, the more it all smelled weird. Peg gets pinched by government suits, and then Dottie disappears too.  Angie had stood there with her heart breaking, watching Peggy get hauled away in cuffs, but it didn’t escape her notice that Dottie seemed a little more fixated on the whole scene than everyone else.  She didn’t seem like a government suit, but it was still fishy.

What if Peggy was some kind of con artist or something, and she’d only seduced Angie because she thought she might need her?  What if Dottie was in on the con, or was a cop, or who knew what?   _Ugh, Martinelli, what the hell did you get yourself into?_ she chastised herself.  

But it had felt so real.  It felt so damned real.  Those kisses had felt real.  The soft, warm things that Peggy had said to her in bed felt real.  The risk that she took coming back to kiss her goodbye felt real.  The night she sobbed on Angie’s chest felt real.  She’d wept that night like a woman who was carrying the weight of the world on her extremely beautiful, surprisingly well sculpted shoulders.  It occurred to Angie now that maybe she really was.

Peggy didn’t want to move into the Griffith, Angie reminded herself.  Angie had practically clubbed her over the head and dragged her by the hair.  Peggy had tried to keep her distance, and Angie had been the one to show her hurt at being brushed off, wearing it on her sleeve like a big, ugly bauble.  

She opened up her delicates drawer to pull out the hidden schnapps bottle, because boy did she ever need it right now, when she noticed a folded piece of paper that she didn’t remember leaving there.  She unfolded it.

 

_Angie,_

_I’m leaving you this in case something happens and I don’t make it back.  I swore to myself the last time I went away that I wouldn’t let myself leave you without saying goodbye properly, but we don’t have time for that now.  Still, I want you to know, Angie, how very much every moment with you has meant to me.  I want you to know that you’ve found your way into my heart and rearranged it to your shape.  I want you to know that now that my body knows your body, it won’t be satisfied with anything else._

_Your trusting me right now means everything in the world.  If all this goes badly, and I don’t see you again, I want you to know that I haven’t kept secrets from you because I don’t trust you, but because I needed to protect you.  You’re more precious to me than I can begin to explain._

_All my love,_   
_English_

 

Angie’s eyes welled up.  She wasn’t crazy.  It was real.  Instead of the schnapps, she decided to take a walk.  And if it happened to take her by the phone company, so be it.

 

**

 

_“But at my back I always hear_  
 _Time’s wingèd chariot hurrying near…”_

 

Peggy was beyond frustrated, but she could hardly be angry with Jarvis.  In some sense, it was a relief to have finally told the Chief and the others everything.  She felt a terrible, familiar ache in her chest, though, to have given up Steve’s blood.  That was still killing her as she and Jarvis sat cuffed to the table in the locked room with the one-way mirror.  Her nerves were raw and she feared the worst was going on across the street, or elsewhere in the building.  She could be of actual use out there; in here, she was just useless, or worse, a target.  She knew that time was running out.  Time’s winged chariot, indeed.

“You weren’t wrong, you know,” he said to her after several minutes of silence.

“About what?”

“Well… you weren’t wrong keeping Captain Rogers’ blood from Mr. Stark.  And, if I may, you weren’t wrong to give it up to the SSR now.”  He looked steadily at her.

Peggy clenched some tears back.  “Gone so long, and he’s still saving people.”

Jarvis smiled sympathetically.  “You know, of course, Miss Carter, that as long as you held on to that vial, you would never be able to really let go of him.”

She sighed.  “I suppose you’re right, Mr. Jarvis.  I just... wanted to protect him. Make sure it ended up in the right place.”

“You wanted to hold onto him,” he corrected.  “Not that I disbelieve your other motivations but I do believe that as the last tangible piece of him, you would have kept it for far longer than would be … beneficial for you.”

Peggy blinked back a few more tears.  That was the truth.  She knew it was.  Angie had felt the specter of Steve hovering over them and she hadn’t even known who he truly was.

“And…” Jarvis added.  “...if I may be so presumptuous... you do need to let go of him, not only for your own sake, but for the sake of the girl.”

Peggy’s head snapped up.  She glared at him.  “What girl?”

He smiled benignly.  “Forgive me, Miss Carter, it’s just that… well, I had assumed that you and, ah… Angie, is it?... were involved?”  He leaned ever so slightly on the word “involved”, in that way that Peggy understood his meaning clearly enough.

“What makes you think I’m involved?” she demanded, leaning on it in the exact same way.

“My apologies for presuming,” he said carefully, “it’s just… you do mention her quite a bit, and she never does seem terribly pleased to see me when I show up at the Automat.  I assumed she was jealous.”

Peggy said nothing.  If Jarvis was onto her and Angie, then God only knew who else might be.  It was more of her worst fears being realized.

“And the way you look at her is… well, it’s a look I’ve seen before.”

“On the faces of other young, besotted ladies, Mr Jarvis?  Is that what you’re getting at?”

He cleared his throat.  “Not ...necessarily young ladies.”

Peggy inspected his face for a moment.  “Mr. Jarvis, do you mean to imply that you yourself have at some point in the past been-”

“Ah-ah, we are not discussing my romantic past, we are discussing your romantic present.  But yes, I am full of surprises.”

Her eyes flicked over his particularly natty looking ensemble and carefully buffed nails, and she remarked, “Well, Mr. Jarvis, perhaps not as many as you think.”

He smirked.  

He was right.  He had convinced her to open up, and let herself lean on others in the first place; he was, whether he knew it or not, indirectly responsible for her letting Angie in.  And now, he was proving to be Angie’s best ally yet again; letting her in had been the first step, letting her stay would be the next.  

But first things first: getting out alive.  _"The grave's a fine and private place, But none, I think, do there embrace..."_ she thought, unable to shake that damned Andrew Marvell out of her head.

“Mr Jarvis, how would you feel about smashing that mirror with this table?”

“I’d feel splendid about it.”

 

**

 

_“Thus, though we cannot make our sun_

_Stand still, yet we will make him run.”_

 

With mere moments to spare, Peggy and the rest of the SSR agents stood watching in horror as Chief Dooley, in a vest that was about to explode, went charging toward the window, and then through it.

As he tumbled from the ninth floor, hurtling toward the pavement, he ignited, sending a wall of sound and broken glass into the SSR offices.  

Fifteen blocks north, Angie froze in place.  She saw the explosion.  She knew it was close to the so-called Phone Company, which she’d by now deduced was nothing of the sort.  

_Peg.  Oh, god._

She didn’t know what was going on, but she threw her shoulders back and picked up her pace.  It might be the dumbest thing she’d ever do, but Angie Martinelli was not one to walk away from a fight.

**Author's Note:**

> These lines are from the Andrew Marvell poem, "His Coy Mistress," which Peggy quoted a part of earlier in an earlier installment.


End file.
